NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — The 99th Medical Group’s Base Operational Medicine Cell is a new way of delivering operational and occupational medicine to Airmen while continuing to deliver injury and illness care through assigned primary care managers in the manner everyone is accustomed too.
In bringing the Air Force Medical Service in line with the Secretary of Defense’s new initiatives, Air Force Medical leadership designed the new system of health care around the concept of “Trusted Care.”
“The concept of trusted care includes a commitment to vigilance for circumstances posing risk to our patients,” said, Lt. Gen. Mark Ediger, U. S. Air Force surgeon general. “That vigilance requires ongoing careful examination of our processes and outcomes with a focus on continuous process improvement through day-to-day problem solving. While our processes for providing care and our programs for improving quality meet industry standards, we must sustain a critical vigilant eye toward our own processes and performance to ensure an indefatigable effort to improve. Our steadfast goal is to provide the very best care, every day for every patient.
“The BOMC program is in the initial stages here in Aeromedical Clinic and will require training of staff over the next few months,” said, Col. Christopher McNulty, 99th MDG, chief of aerospace medicine. “We hope the transition will be transparent to service members. We believe that the new processes will result in more efficient ways to complete standardized physical exams and will eventually pay back with reduced wait times, more accurate administrative paperwork, and reduced re-work needing to be accomplished.”
The end result will produce specialists in each phase of the operational and occupational exam processes, which will able to proficiently complete standardized exams with 100 percent accuracy of each exam. It will be a system of continuous process improvement, eliminating administrative errors with the ultimate goal of improving service for our patients.
The 99th MDG thanks everyone for their patience while they train personnel and put BOMC into operation at Nellis AFB.